Unique copy of the founding work of the picaresque novel, a literary genre that has influenced much of the 19thand 20th century literature, illustrated with 40 plates avant la lettre and 21 original drawings by Ransonnette and Chasselet.
This outstanding copy contains 9 original drawings by Pierre Nicolás de Ransonnette (1745- 1810) which were not used for the edition, with the exception of the portrait frontispiece, and 12 original drawings by Charles Abraham Chasselat (1782-1843), which are dated 1817 and prepared for a later edition.
Ransonette (1745-1810), a student to Choffard, was draughtman and engraver to the brother of the King of France, he drew and engraved the illustrated to the Histoire de la Sainte Chapelle (1790), and some of the illustration of the L’Encyclopédie des Arts et Métiers and L’Expédition d’Egypte. Chasselet, slightly less known, was also an artist and lithographer of some renown.
The Lazarillo is one of the most important pieces of Spanish literature of the Golden Age, to some, as important as the Quijote; it’s importance for the development of modern literature transcends the Spanish frontiers, credited as the founding work of the picaresque, a genre which exposes injustice whilst amusing the reader; more recent literature of the same genre includes Fielding’s Tom Jones and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The Lazarillo is a reflection of what the public sought, the picaresque genre being prose fiction -with elements of comedy and satire- centered in the adventures of appealing heroes -or even antiheroes- who live in a corrupt society, Dicken’s Pickwick Papers, Lesage’s Gil Blas, Fielding’s Tom Jones, and of course Cervantes’ Don Quijote are too picaresque in genre; the main character tends to be of low character and social stratum, who unlike a traditional hero is cynical and amoral, the lack of plot is often a common feature in the genre, and the story is told as a series of loosely connected adventures.
The authorship remains to-date unknown, despite several attempts to an attribution, in recent times the name of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza has been given often as the author, however Rosa Navarro, an academic from the University of Barcelona has published two well-received articles granting authorship to Alfonso de Valdes, a secretary to Charles V, of Jewish ascent, and dating from 1520-1530 for the material included, and previous to the Council of Trent. She, in turn, gives the second part as the produce of Hurtado de Mendoza’s pen, inferior in quality and overall different.
“The anonymous author of Lazarillo de Tormes is a master of deception. He makes his protagonist supremely attractive to the reader by contrasting him with unlikable characters (the blind beggar, the priest, the squire) and by the intimacy of autobiography. The reader increasingly sympathizes with Lazarillo, reaching in the third chapter a point of genuine admiration for the boy's self-sacrifice at the time of greatest physical suffering. The author then creates an illusion of passing time to reach the book's final scene, in which the mature Lázaro profits from the sexual exploitation of his wife. Lazarillo de Tormes, comic only on a superficial level, presents a corrupt society that forces its materialistic values on even its most virtuous members; Lázaro, like all men, eventually compromises. The reader, so attracted by the young Lazarillo who dominates the work, often fails to see the odious Lázaro who finally emerges and obliterates his former self.” (Howard Mancing, The Deceptiveness of Lazarillo de Tormes, PMLA, Vol. 90, No. 3 (May, 1975), pp. 426-432)
Palau 133488; Cohen 502-503.
